How Does Suárez Compare To Other Liverpool Top Scorers?

Often after an impressive Liverpool win, I post the stats from the match and the season as a whole, to demonstrate how well the Reds performed. However, as Luis Suárez became only the third Liverpool player to bag twenty goals in one season in the Premier League era with his hattrick against Wigan, I thought I’d take a closer look at how his record matches up to the club’s top scorers from seasons past.

With twenty-one league goals this season, Suárez is currently fourth in a table of Liverpool’s top single season scorers; Fernando Torres scored twenty-four in 2007/08, and Robbie Fowler picked up twenty-five in 1994/95, and twenty-eight the following season.

Impressive stuff from the Uruguayan. But then I realised that 1994/95 was a forty-two game season, so Fowler had more time to score goals. I have therefore compiled the amount of time each player played to rank them by minutes per goal:

Suárez remains in fourth place with his performance so far this season, but instead of Fowler it is Michael Owen who is ahead of him, with his efforts from 2000/01.

I also compiled the figures excluding penalties, but there’s little point including the table here as the top four remain the same, as none of them scored a spot kick in the seasons listed. In fact, Fernando Torres never even took a penalty for the Reds, and Luis Suárez has missed the two he has taken, against Sunderland in the league and Brighton in the FA Cup.

If we assume that Suárez plays every minute of the ten remaining league games this season (which is likely) but fails to score another goal (which is unlikely), then he would still finish the season ninth in the above table, with a goal every 157.8 minutes played.

Out of interest, on the assumption that Suárez does play every remaining minute, here is how many goals he needs to move up the table:

It appears that Fernando Torres’ record is likely to remain safe for another season! In fairness to Luis though, Torres was frequently substituted after scoring as Rafa Benitez looked to protect him from injury, whilst Suárez has not been extended the same courtesy by Brendan Rodgers. For instance, in 2009/10 (the best season on the table), Torres only completed ninety minutes ten times in his twenty-two appearances.

However the rest of the season pans out, Luis Suárez can be very proud of his performance so far.